The Conservatives have become the true workers’ party

The party conference season has showcased two very different visions of Britain. Jeremy Corbyn speaks of the country as one giant Victorian-style workhouse. We are living in zero-hours Britain, apparently — a land where workers subsist on starvation wages and cannot even rely on those. So this is why Labour proposes a great upheaval, mass nationalisation, the confiscation of private property and — as of last month — the abolition of private schools. Corbyn would plunge Britain into a socialist experiment more radical than any seen since the 1970s — but the abject failure of the free enterprise system, he says, demands no less.

In Manchester, a Conservative chancellor announced his intention to ‘end low pay altogether’ by lifting the National Living Wage to £10.50 an hour within the next five years — one of the highest rates in the world, let alone Europe. This can be done because years of progressive Conservative reforms have pushed unemployment to a 45-year low and income inequality near a 30-year low. Britain is a magnet for foreign investment, thanks to a stable economy, respect for private property, world-class, properly funded universities and the rule of law. Disposable income is near an all-time high. The Tory mission is to drive it higher and ensure that, as under the Cameron years, the lowest paid benefit the most.

This is a strange kind of failure. Just 3 per cent of the working population are employed on zero-hours contracts in their main job, and most say this suits them because they prefer not having to work specific hours. Those on the contracts work an average of 24.5 hours a week, and only a quarter of them would like to work extra hours. The threshold at which individuals pay income tax has risen from £6,475 in 2010 to £12,500 today.